Adultery: Voluntary sexual relations between a married person and someone other than his or her spouse.
Algebra: A type of mathematics used to determine the value of unknown quantities where these can be related to known numbers.
Arabesque: A type of ornamentation often used in Arab art, combining plant and sometimes animal figures to produce intricate, interlaced patterns.
Blasphemy: The act of insulting God.
Caliph: A successor to Muhammad as spiritual and political leader of Islam.
Caliphate: The domain ruled by a caliph.
Caravan: A train of pack animals and travelers journeying through an inhospitable region.
Dowry: The wealth that a bride brings to her marriage.
Emir: A military and political leader in Islamic countries, whose domain is called an emirate.
Fasting: Deliberately going without food, often but not always for religious reasons.
Hajj: A pilgrimage to Mecca, which is expected of all Muslims who can afford to make it.
Idol: A statue of a god that the god's followers worship.
Imam: The supreme spiritual leader in Shi'ite Islam.
Interest: In economics, a fee charged by a lender against a borrower—usually a percentage of the amount borrowed.
Indo-European languages: The languages of Europe, India, Iran, and surrounding areas, which share common roots.
Islam: A faith that teaches submission to the one god Allah and his word as given through his prophet Muhammad in the Koran.
Jihad: Islamic "holy war" to defend or extend the faith.
Judeo-Christian: Describes ideas common to the spiritual heritage of both Jews and Christians.
Persia had long been a great cultural center, and it produced a religion that influenced the development of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Zoroastrianism (zohr-oh-AS-tree-un-izm). Founded by the prophet Zoroaster (c. 628-c. 551 b. c.), Zoroastrianism taught of a supreme deity representing ultimate good, who continually did battle with his satanic opposite. Not long after Zoroaster's time, Persian forces took Babylonia, which had a large population of Jews taken as captives from Israel. The
Koran: The holy book of Islam.
Lingua franca: A common language.
Minaret: A slender mosque tower with one or more balconies on which a muezzin stands to call the faithful to prayer.
Mosque: A Muslim temple.
Muezzin: A crier who calls worshipers to prayer five times a day in the Muslim world.
Muslim: A person who practices the Islamic religion.
Mysticism: The belief that one can attain direct knowledge of God or ultimate reality through some form of meditation or special insight.
Philosophy: An area of study concerned with subjects including values, meaning, and the nature of reality.
Pilgrimage: A journey to a site of religious significance.
Prophet: Someone who receives communications directly from God and passes these on to others.
Scientific method: A means of drawing accurate conclusions by collecting information, studying data, and forming theories or hypotheses.
Secular: Of the world; typically used in contrast to "spiritual."
Semitic: A term describing a number of linguistic and cultural groups in the Middle East, including the modern-day Arabs and Israelis.
Shi'ism: A branch of Islam that does not acknowledge the first three caliphs, and that holds that the true line of leadership is through a series of imams who came after Ali.
Sunni: An orthodox Muslim who acknowledges the first four caliphs.
Trigonometry: The mathematical study of triangles, angles, arcs, and their properties and applications.
Zoroastrianism: A religion, founded in Persia, that taught of an ongoing struggle between good and evil.
Jews were thus exposed to Zoroastrianism, by then the dominant religion of Persia, and the Zoroastrian idea of a devil entered the Jewish scriptures. (Parts of the Old Testament written prior to this time certainly contained references to evil itself, but there was little concept of a single entity as the source of that evil.) to the influence of Judaism on Christianity and Islam, the idea of a devil entered those faiths as well. In addition, Zoroastrianism also had an impact on an odd splinter religion known as
A map of the Middle East in the mid-600s shows the growth of Muslim territories in the years following Muhammad's death in 632. Illustration by XNR Productions. Reproduced by permission of the Gale Group.
Manichaeism (man-uh-KEE-izm; see box, "Manichaeism").
World History
